Скачать или смотреть Early Days of Auroville | Build Matrimandir | The India Trip | The National Film Board of Canada

History is important for Auroville – it holds within it the time of the pioneers, the time of the almost barren plateau, and the time of the Mother. Like the rest of India, Auroville has changed immensely over the past 50+ years. Rural ways have turned cosmopolitan, bullock-carts have been traded in for tractors, and industry and prosperity have risen hand in hand. Old images of the City of Dawn are hard to reconcile with our current reality and the changes are sometimes tough to digest for those who know Auroville from its early days.

Mother had already had the idea of an ‘ideal town’ during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime, which would have Sri Aurobindo living at the centre. This place would be the physical environment for those striving for individual transformation through union with the Divine. For a while, there was talk of bringing this town to life close to Hyderabad, where the Nizam was prepared to donate a substantial area of land. After Sri Aurobindo left his body in 1950, the Mother lost interest in the project for a few years, until a new spark came. In 1954, Mother recorded a Dream that she had for the world, one that ends with the statement: “The earth is certainly not ready to realise such an ideal […] That is why I call it a dream. Yet, this dream is on the way of becoming a reality.” This high aspiration of the Mother became the basis of the Auroville experiment.

While Mother was clear that she would not live in Auroville – as her place was in the Ashram in Pondicherry, close to Sri Aurobindo’s samadhi – several attempts were made to find a place for what later would become Auroville. In January 1967, Roger Anger brought her a map of the area north of Pondicherry asking her to point at the centre of the future town. Mother concentrated and pointed to a particular location. Roger Anger drove to the area and found an almost completely barren plateau with a lone, large banyan tree. Mother was happy to hear of the presence of this sacred tree, and designated it the geographical centre of the future town.

Mother then vested the already existing Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS), of which she was the President, with the responsibility to acquire funding, support, and land for the project. The SAS managed to get the support of the Government of India, and later, through Roger Anger and Kailash Jhaveri, secured endorsements by UNESCO, which considered it ‘a project of importance to humanity’. In the meantime, Mother prepared and endorsed key documents on what Auroville was aiming to be, both in its physical form – through town planning – and its aims and ideals – especially through the creation of the Auroville Charter. All these efforts, finally, led to the day that we now celebrate yearly as the birthday of Auroville, the day of the inauguration ceremony – 28 February 1968.